Undoubtedly there are innumerable conferences to be held, books to be written and PhD dissertations to be defended on the subject of the media and Election 2016. This being the age of instant analysis via always-on social media, a great many wise words have already been proclaimed and a number of smart theses put forward to help us make sense of the historic ascension of Donald J. Trump, the man so many of us never for a second believed could ever be president of the United States of America.

Facts can be found to support any one of these theories – each in its own way a dismal indictment of the media and political journalism. Whatever we ultimately blame, the fact is, though Hillary Clinton captured more of the popular vote than Trump, our neighbors nevertheless elected a man with zero political experience who spewed racist, sexist, xenophobic hate throughout his campaign, and the media establishment, pollsters and pundits never really saw his victory coming.

For that, much media soul-searching is called for. Indeed, that began in earnest this week. As Kyle Pope, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, put it so bluntly the morning after the election: “Journalism’s moment of reckoning has arrived.

“Its inability to understand Donald Trump’s rise over the last year, ending in his victory Tuesday night, clearly stands among journalism’s great failures, certainly in a generation and probably in modern times,” Pope wrote. “In terms of our bellwether moments, this is our anti-Watergate.”

J-Source/ProjetJ is a publication of the Canadian Journalism Project, a venture led by the journalism programs at Ryerson University and Carleton University and supported by the post-secondary journalism programs at member institutions of J- Schools Canada/EcolesJ (j-schoolscanada.ca) as well as by a group of donors.